Lost Lessons of Counterinsurgency

[Gian P Gentile]

...I expect flak from COL Gentile shortly for my choice of book , given his distaste for Dr. Krepinevich's thesis. However, I found his argument works, even if some of his history may be skewed.

First, I sent a personal email to Niel congratulating him for winning the award from such a reputable publication like AFJ. I thought the article to be articulate in its purpose and argument.

In a work of history, though, Niel, I am not sure how you can acknowledge that the argument works even though the history, as you say, "is flawed?" A good work of historical scholarship by its nature has a good argument because it has a good use of history.

This points to a bigger problem with much professional writing in the US Army based on recent combat experience in Iraq and Astan. The bigger problem revolves around looking to the past for a template and then recounting ones own recent combat experience and then having the implicit point that because one writes about the past and juxtaposes that past to current experience then the recent experience somehow has greater meaning. David Fivecoat's new article in MR is an example of this. So is Neil's essay.

At some point folks should really go back and re-read Clausewitz and heed his guidance that history should inform the commander's judgment and knowledge but never, never, accompany him to the battlefield.

In a sense, Niel, you are violating St Carl's guidance by having the past of Vietnam as told (wrongly, I might add) by Krepinevich accompany you on your present journey of memory of your recent battlefield experience in Iraq and accounting for it.

gg

[Hacksaw]

Old Friend,

I understand your point, but I think you are wrong with regard to Niel's "use" of history...

What Niel describes and the purpose of his thesis is to describe how a reading of a book after his first tour angered him because he felt a sense of "betrayal" (my word) because he felt the institutional Army had allowed itself to flush a wealth of knowledge that would have informed its approach in Iraq. The primary thought, Why am I left to find this dust covered book on a shelf in the Frieberg Library, why isn't this in at least a small part included in the PME curricula? After that, it appears that Niel was informed by history on his second tour.

This essay is mercifly short... the main thesis being the Army has a history of flushing this type of experience... might we learn this time? Not that OIF is the template, but rather we ought to mean it when we say "Full Spectrum" when we educate young leaders.

That's all i have to say about that, hope the view from Trophy Point is still in color.

Kirk

[Steve Blair]

Well done, Neil!

[William F. Owen]

In a sense, Niel, you are violating St Carl's guidance by having the past of Vietnam as told (wrongly, I might add) by Krepinevich accompany you on your present journey of memory of your recent battlefield experience in Iraq and accounting for it.

I think Cavguy's point is that the Army knew stuff in 1973, that it deliberately chose to forget or remain ignorant of in 2003.

I suspect that the bones of lessons that were taught to Advisors at Di-Ann, in RVN, were no where to be found in Iraq, until pretty recently.

[Old Eagle]

This warrants a beer -- you can buy me one next time we're together. (Gotta do something with all that prize money).

I'm too smart to jump into the analytical part of this thread just yet.

[Ken White]

...you are violating St Carl's guidance by having the past of Vietnam as told (wrongly, I might add) by Krepinevich accompany you on your present journey of memory of your recent battlefield experience in Iraq and accounting for it. gg

Deponent sayeth:

""The good Colonel often forgets that most all history is skewed a bit. No matter -- as you note, there are still lessons there.""



Seriously -- Have a good one, gg!

[Gian P Gentile]

...Seriously -- Have a good one, gg!

wilco, Ken

gian

[Cavguy]

At some point folks should really go back and re-read Clausewitz and heed his guidance that history should inform the commander's judgment and knowledge but never, never, accompany him to the battlefield.

In a sense, Niel, you are violating St Carl's guidance by having the past of Vietnam as told (wrongly, I might add) by Krepinevich accompany you on your present journey of memory of your recent battlefield experience in Iraq and accounting for it.

gg

Sir,

I will leave it to you to read this - written while I was still in Iraq (prior to further corruption at Leavenworth and pre-SWC membership), to judge whether I adhered to St. Carl's perscription or not.

I would submit that a secondary point of my essay was to learn from the past, and adapt the prinicples to the present, rather than slavishly adhere to a cookie cutter approach. The whole point of that article was to understand your environment on its own terms and devise an appropriate solution.

The first point was, of course, we shouldn't have made the mistakes in the first place, because a trip to the library was full with examples of what didn't work in the past.

Niel

[Gian P Gentile]

Niel said:

I would submit that a secondary point of my essay was to learn from the past, and adapt the prinicples to the present, rather than slavishly adhere to a cookie cutter approach. The whole point of that article was to understand your environment on its own terms and devise an appropriate solution.

Your first sentence contains a contradicition which is basically my whole point. What you call not "slavishly" adhering to a "cookie cutter approach" is essentially what you end up doing in the first clause of the sentence: "to learn from the past, and adapt the principles to the present." Niel, how does one actually "learn" from the past? And your essay itself actually betrays the "cookie cutter" approach that you deny using. In the first couple of paragraphs you explicitly say when reading Krepinevich you got so mad becuase everytime you saw the word Vietnam in it you could have replaced it with the word "Iraq." How is that not cookie cutting?

And Niel, what if Krepinevich is wrong; or, at least only half right? What if he wrongfully neglected to mention in his book that the reason why Westmoreland had to go conventional with the American Army early on was because there was a substantial regular South Vietnamese communist threat along with a NVA regular threat that he could not just dismiss and go-Galula? What if Krepinevich way overplayed the amount of difference between Westmoreland and Abrams? Basically what if he was just flat wrong in his interpretation of Vietnam? I am sorry buddy, but your essay essentially argues that Vietnam was just like Iraq, only this time since we have the lessons and principles provided to us in books like "The Army and Vietnam" we are on the road to success because we have learned and applied those lessons.

I submit that history doesnt work that way; that the idea that one can derive principles and lessons from history and apply them directly in the present is chimera.

What you have done, though, is elevated his book to the oracle truth of Vietnam and justified its correctness with your story of learning and success in Iraq.

In fact, Niel, as much as you do not want to hear it, your essay fits perfectly in with the Surge Triumph narrative. That Triumph Narrative is based on the trope of Vietnam. That the American Army in Iraq didnt get it, but finally got around to learning through study of books like Krepenivich, and now because of that learning and adapting, we have success, if not victory in Iraq. Tell me how the basic narrative arc within your essay is in contradcition to this?

And Hack, old friend. The colors are almost gone, but naturally life is sweet on the banks of the Hudson.

gian

[Ken White]

...what if Krepinevich is wrong; or, at least only half right?

What if he is? I submit that most works of history suffer from that problem. Certainly it is my observation, experience and firm conviction that all history I have read covering events in which I was involved and of which I thus have personal knowledge is deficient to nearly or more than that extent. That is, I suspect for ideological reasons, particularly true of Viet Nam. History as writ is an imperfect art.

What if he wrongfully neglected to mention in his book that the reason why Westmoreland had to go conventional with the American Army early on was because there was a substantial regular South Vietnamese communist threat along with a NVA regular threat that he could not just dismiss and go-Galula?

He could have mentioned that but he, a 1972 USMA Grad, would have been wrong to do so -- he could not possibly 'know' and thus had to rely on the papers of the MACV Staff -- who were a bigger problem than all the VC Main force in South Viet Nam. They were essentially a spent force -- well, the Staff was,too but I meant the VC Main Force, their combat units -- by early 1965 and that's why Uncle Ho sent the PAVN (later NVA) south in 65 and later -- after Westmoreland had committed to big battles. Giap was a sharp cookie...

Westmoreland did what he did due to a fundamental operational misunderstanding and a preference or desire to 'win decisiviely.' Laudable aim, wrong venue. Most revisionist looks at Viet Nam have been prompted by his former staff loyalists in a postwar attempt to justify what many perceive as a failure.

What if Krepinevich way overplayed the amount of difference between Westmoreland and Abrams? Basically what if he was just flat wrong in his interpretation of Vietnam?

He wasn't 100% right but he was close enough for guvmint work...

I am sorry buddy, but your essay essentially argues that Vietnam was just like Iraq, only this time since we have the lessons and principles provided to us in books like "The Army and Vietnam" we are on the road to success because we have learned and applied those lessons.

That was not my or apparently some others sensing of his essay and my perception is that you have elected to take it that way simply to make this point:

...your essay fits perfectly in with the Surge Triumph narrative. That Triumph Narrative is based on the trope of Vietnam.

We can disagree on that as well. That is, disagree on the thrust of his essay...

As you know, you and I essentially agree on the 'surge.' We differ only in that I mention it (was not necessary and only may have speeded things up slightly) occasionally instead of routinely

[Cavguy]

Your first sentence contains a contradicition which is basically my whole point. What you call not "slavishly" adhering to a "cookie cutter approach" is essentially what you end up doing in the first clause of the sentence: "to learn from the past, and adapt the principles to the present." Niel, how does one actually "learn" from the past? And your essay itself actually betrays the "cookie cutter" approach that you deny using. In the first couple of paragraphs you explicitly say when reading Krepinevich you got so mad becuase everytime you saw the word Vietnam in it you could have replaced it with the word "Iraq." How is that not cookie cutting?

Okay, I'll plead guilty to the lesser charge of taking Krepinevich's Vietnam cookie cutter and applying it's general principles to my personal AO. And you know what - it worked! When I tried it subsequently in other parts of my AO - guess what - it worked! We took some of that down to Ramadi and had to adapt it again some (very different AO's) but the principles remained the same (protect the population) and guess what - it worked!

I am sorry buddy, but your essay essentially argues that Vietnam was just like Iraq, only this time since we have the lessons and principles provided to us in books like "The Army and Vietnam" we are on the road to success because we have learned and applied those lessons.

Disagree on the first. I don't say Vietnam was like Iraq. I say that Vietnam had a COIN component, and the tactical principles that showed promise there also worked in Iraq. In the later half of the essay, I briefly allude that those are the same principles articulated by nearly every COIN author in the past half century.

I submit that history doesnt work that way; that the idea that one can derive principles and lessons from history and apply them directly in the present is chimera.

I strongly disagree here. I also argue with your use of "directly", which is pejorative.

Why study history if we can't learn from it and use it to inform the present? We of course have to consider how conditions have changed when applying principles, but are you seriously suggesting we can't improve our current performance by looking back at similar periods? I have learned a great deal by studying history and drawing upon what characteristcs made past commander's successful. Why bother if what you say is true? I should just go back to my Clive Cussler novels and put down the 600-page tome I'm reading on Stillwell in China, or the 1000 page monstrosity I just read on Jutland.

What you have done, though, is elevated his book to the oracle truth of Vietnam and justified its correctness with your story of learning and success in Iraq.

Sir, I think this is you reading too much into this given your surge hearburn. I make no statements as to the veracity of his Vietnam history - I have no great basis in Vietnam study for that. There is great use in the principles of "clear hold build" he outlined, which have proven successful in many locations. The essay was on the book that most changed my career, not the one I think makes the best historical argument or even articulates COIN the best. Reading Dr. K's book profoundly changed my personal approach in Iraq, which had direct and corresponding results. I would argue that there are better and more complete COIN works I perhaps should have randomly picked up in the Friedberg library (the selection wasn't big), but his was the one that opened my eyes to the idea that we had faced challenges like this before, and had found some things that did work.

The army didn't see fit to provide any formal education in COIN for me or my BCT until Taji in January 2006, when it was too late to significantly adjust the training of my unit. In my opinion that reflects professional malpractice on the part of the Army educational base, because in my opinion the 'great amnesia' of 1973-2003 prolonged our stay in Iraq and thus cost soldiers' lives.

Things are better today, but the institution still hasn't really adapted. COIN remains an ILE elective. There are no TLO's/ELO's for COIN. There is no COIN proponent. There is no COIN training strategy. No one has articulated what Army officers should look like in the future, or how to balance the need for proficient 'full spectrum' officers that FM 3-0 calls for. TRADOC's sole COIN organization has a military staff of four, a $1m budget, and no authority.

The operational force is COIN focused, because we are 100% committed. As soon as we get breathing space, we will head back to maneuver training. Next door to the COIN seminar we are running at Leavenworth this week is a BCTP conference designing the return of conventional operations to our training centers. I fully agree we need that skillset back in appropriate amounts. I am also saddened that the Army hasn't really made an effort to integrate COIN principles into OES/NCOES. Nor do I see any indication it will. (Clarification: I don't consider IED-D, E2S, C-Sniper, C-IED, Attack the Network, etc. as "COIN", I am talking the tactical and operational principles of defeating insurgent groups, which are not TTP's and counterguerilla tactics the aforementioned programs contain) What that means is that we will likely lose this competency that was bled for unless action is taken.

In fact, Niel, as much as you do not want to hear it, your essay fits perfectly in with the Surge Triumph narrative.

Not my fault you disagree with the surge narrative. I am telling the story from my foxhole. If others see it in context of the surge that is fine - except it happened a year before the surge.

That Triumph Narrative is based on the trope of Vietnam. That the American Army in Iraq didnt get it, but finally got around to learning through study of books like Krepenivich, and now because of that learning and adapting, we have success, if not victory in Iraq. Tell me how the basic narrative arc within your essay is in contradcition to this?

It's not a contradiction, and not my problem that it does fit in the surge narrative. I made a case on this board back a few months ago that I didn't think the "surge" had anything to do with Tal Afar and Ramadi success.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. We DID learn. We DID adapt. That is a GOOD thing. I actually don't think it was because we started reading Galula, Trinquier, and Kitson en masse, or suddenly read FM 3-24 . At the time of my story FM 3-24 hadn't been published. It wasn't published until two months prior to me leaving Iraq. We acted differently for a host of reasons, much of which was that those of us on second tours realized what we did on the first often didn't work. So we tried different things, and took those things that worked, shared them, and tried them. Then FM 3-24 and such comes out and basically validates our experiential learning.

The Greek tragedy in all this is that the "learning" was mostly "re-learning" what was sitting on the shelves of our library. Men died because we failed to train or appreciate the lessons of past counterinsurgency warfare. A few hours of instruction on the basics of counterinsurgency warfare in OBC, a day in CCC, and a COIN module in SAMS and CGSC would have probably saved hundreds of lives lost. I can't prove it, but that's my theory. And why many such as myself are bitter about it.

And if the principles of COIN don't work, how do we explain that the first three major BCT sized successes (Tal Afar, Al Qaim, Ramadi) all involved commanders acting in contradiction to the MNF-I commander's stated guidance to withdraw to FOBs and handover to ISF as soon as possible? And that those BCT's actions were much closer to classic COIN principles, and they had success? All timing and luck? I think not.

As always, I enjoy the challenge to my thoughts, as they help me reconsider and solidify them. I had a brief flash in the pan the other day when we agreed on something on another forum. Maybe lightning will strike twice!

[Gian P Gentile]

...I had a brief flash in the pan the other day when we agreed on something on another forum. Maybe lightning will strike twice!

Me too; do stop by when you visit here. Perhaps we can have lunch together.

gg

[Gian P Gentile]

Cavguy said:

I strongly disagree here. I also argue with your use of "directly", which is pejorative...Why study history if we can't learn from it and use it to inform the present?

The word "directly" was not used in a pejorative sense (sorry if you took it that way) but in an argumentative way to make a point. So I use the word again, your essay (as I read it) does use the "lessons" from Vietnam as highlighted by Krepinevic (K) and "directly" applied them to Iraq in your second tour there. K says that the US failed in Vietnam because it didn’t focus on classic coin and population security, you say in Iraq the first three or so years (mostly) the US failed (or at a minimum performed very poorly) in Iraq because it did not do classic coin and did not focus on population security. How is that not applying the lessons directly?

How would it seem if some brigade or division commander right after the march up to Baghdad said that before the assault he had re-read his Jomini, realized that it had been overlooked in the American Army for the past 20 years, applied its Principles in the assault, and as a result of applying those principles the march up to Baghdad in Spring 2003 was a great success?

Qualitatively and with assuming a reasonable amount of context, how is this example of "using" history any different than yours?

Again, it is a different philosophy of history that you and I have. To quote one of your words, you see history as something that can be "used." I see the "using" of history as dangerous because it produces a mindset of the templating of the past into lessons and principles to be plucked at will for "use" in the present. But in so doing this you end becoming a-historical in the sense that by detaching these lessons from their historical moorings and plotting them in the present you remove them from their context. What is it about this period of history of the Vietnam War and counterinsurgency that we privilege it over other periods? As a matter of abstracted historical philosophy, why do we privilege the writings of Galula for lessons learned in Iraq say over the British imperial officer CE Callwell? The conventional answer to this question as given to me by one of the primary authors of FM 3-24 is that Galula's world of the early 1960s is simply closer to ours than Callwell's. Well back into the reality of the present, I don’t buy such arguments. But those that do have thus detached the early 1960s counterinsurgency theory and practice and have plotted in the present as a template and have elevated it to the absolute oracle of historical truth because they align in analog fashion to current experience in Iraq and say in a reductive, simplistic way that here are the lessons from Vietnam, we have learned them, have applied them in Iraq and because we have learned and adapted we are winning.

That is what, in barest form, is happening here.

[120mm]

Not that I'm anywhere close to grounded in enough historical theory to get in this bun-fight, but I fail to see how taking the "jist" of one historical situation and applying those elements you think apply to another.

On one hand, it's entirely possible to be completely technically accurate, while still being substantially incorrect.

It's also possible to be technically inaccurate and substantially correct.

Both probably happen more often than you'd think....

[wm]

I think that a better way of describing the lament in Niel’s AFJ article is that he felt, after his visit to the library, that the US Army had failed to progress.

We might review the bidding here and see that we have two disparate views on the value of the study of history. Some may view history as a review of and reporting on the deeds done by other agents in times past. The value in studying it is to save us from "reinventing wheels" by not redoing what has already been done before. Others (I suspect this includes Gian) submit that history falls within the realm of the “human” sciences. We study it to learn more about ourselves, who and what we are. We do this through a process of reenactment (to use a term from R. G. Collingwood) of the processes others have used to work through their problems in order to reach a resolution to them.

Regardless of which view we take, we need to remember that problems faced by people in the past were their problems, not our problems. Our problems may find analogues in the problems of past agents, but each pair of analogues also has relevant points of dissimilarity that we must keep in the front of our minds. Otherwise we will be seduced into repeating the past, which may be better described as failing to progress.


What Niel seemed to be espousing is what we find in George Santayana’s book, The Life of Reason. An apropos quotation, which puts Santayana’s most quoted (and misquoted) line into its context, follows:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is
set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. In a second stage men are docile to events, plastic to new habits and suggestions, yet able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction. This is the plane of manhood and true progress. Last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that happens is at once forgotten; a vain, because unpractical, repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile
readaptation. In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

Not all readaptation, however, is progress, for ideal identity must not be lost. The Latin language did not progress when it passed into Italian. It died. Its amiable heirs may console us for its departure, but do not remove the fact that their parent is extinct. So every individual, nation, and religion has its limit of adaptation; so long as the increment it receives is digestible, so long as the organisation already attained is extended and elaborated without being surrendered, growth goes on; but when the foundation itself shifts, when what is gained at the periphery is lost at the centre, the flux appears again and progress is not real. Thus a succession of generations or languages
or religions constitutes no progress unless some ideal present at the beginning is transmitted to the end and reaches a better expression there; without this stability at the core no common standard exists and all comparison of value with value must be external and arbitrary. Retentiveness, we must repeat, is the condition of progress.

Sanatayana’s insistence on retentiveness as a condition of progress is really of little value. It simply is a precondition for us to be able to say that we have made progress. Progeress judgments work like this: We have to be able to make a comparison between the way things were and the way things currently are. We than make a normative judgment about the state of affairs today compared to that of the original reference point. If we do not “remember the past,” then we cannot say we have improved on the past because we have no basis for measurement. It is only in this sense that we are “condemned to repeat” the past: we are at a point without reference. We are “unstuck in time” as Kurt Vonnegut poignantly described Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five.